(EXPANDED FROM 12/30/2022) This story operates on two levels. The first one is how the car-buff media could be wrong in its predictions about future products. The second level looks at how slow the Chrysler […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/5/2022) A few years ago Dean’s Garage posted a fascinating story about the battle over the 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV’s styling. Jim and Cheryl Farrell (2022) described how a design proposal championed […]
(EXPANDED FROM 15/8/2023) General Motors’ 1973 mid-sized cars were a major focus of our discussion about William Mitchell’s tenure as head of design. Thus, I thought it would be a good time to expand on […]
Adam Wade of Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History (2025) recently compared the Lincoln Continental Mark III and the first-generation Cadillac Eldorado. Although the Mark III had a much simpler and more derivative design, Wade […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/24/2023) Collectible Automobile suggested a while back that the “aeroback” styling of the 1978-79 Buick Century hurt its sales (Witzenburg, 2023). However, the article didn’t compare output with previous years or other General […]
(EXPANDED FROM 8/25/2022) One of the more curious aspects of the postwar U.S. auto industry is the way that dramatic change was often normalized by the media — as long as it went in the […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/14/2021) A few years ago CJ and Geeber commented that the 1975 Dodge Charger would have worked better if it had been given the more distinctive design of the 1978 Magnum XE. That’s […]
Motor Trend magazine’s 1974 road test of seven personal coupes may have been rather vapid in many respects, but it did offer one useful critique. Writer Jim Brokaw complained that the largest models — the […]
(EXPANDED FROM 5/16/2023) In response to the interesting conversation in the comment thread about Chrysler’s early-70s compacts, I thought it could be useful to expand on a data dive I did a while back on […]
When I came across a 1966 Oldsmobile Starfire at this year’s LeMay annual car show, it got me wondering why such a nicely styled car failed to catch on in one of the 1960’s hottest […]
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